“And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn’t seem worth starting anything. I can’t settle down….. You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately.” C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed.

“For the inner biography of man, grief and repentance do have meaning. Grieving for a person whom we have loved and lost in a sense continues his life, and repentance permits the culprit to rise again, as it were, freed of guilt. The loved person whom we grieve for has been lost objectively, in empirical time, but he is preserved subjectively, in inner time… Suffering is intended to guard man from apathy. As long as we suffer, we remain physically alive. In fact, we mature in suffering, grow because of it – it makes us richer and stronger… The act of looking at something doesn’t create that thing; neither does the act of looking away annihilate it. And so, the suppression of an impulse of grief does not annul the thing that is grieved over. Mourners, in fact, ordinarily rebel against, say, taking a sedative instead of weeping all through the night”. Dr. Viktor Frankl: The Doctor and The Soul.

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Counselling and psychotherapy can help! 1,2,3.

 

References:

1: Neimeyer, R.A. & Currier, J.M. (2009). Grief Therapy: Evidence of efficacy and emerging directions. A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Vol. 18, Nubmer 6, 352-256.

2: Wagner, B., Knaevelsrud, C. & Maercker, A. (2006). Internet based Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy for Complicated Grief: A randomized controlled trial. Death Studies, Vol. 30, 429-453.

3: Neimeyer, R.A. (2004). Fostering posttraumatic growth: A narrative elaboration. Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 15, 53-59.